Coming out…

…into the opposition
There are a lot of things hidden in closets. But nowadays more and more people are coming out of the closets. Take the ex-speaker Ralph Ramkarran. Ever since he pouted and flounced out of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) because of some “hard words” one of his comrades tossed his way, he’s been sounding increasingly “opposition”.
In the beginning, he found an outlet for his criticisms in the opposition Stabber News. They played ducks and drakes about their relationship for months. Ramkarran pretended he was writing a blog into which he was pouring out his heart and the Stabber pretended that they were simply republishing it. Problem was the printing in the paper was invariably before the posting on the “Conversation Tree” site!
The Tree has since died, but coverage of Ramkarran’s views has increased. First by Stabber when they carried them also as news articles. Now the virulently opposition MuckrakerKN has followed suit. But this was all circumstantial, isn’t it? Where’s the smoking gun, you ask? Well, it’s all there in black and white in Sunday’s opposition newspapers.
Seeking to cover their behinds after they murdered the Amaila Falls Hydro Electric Project (AFHEP) and consigned poor Guyanese to another decade of astronomically high electricity bills (excepting Linden), the opposition’s been playing “blame the government” non-stop. So in their MuckrakerKN’s free column, A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) rips into President Donald Ramotar preventing them from sitting down with him to give Amaila the go-ahead!!!
And how did the president achieve this astounding feat? Well at the PPP/C congress, the president used some “hard words” to describe People’s National Congress (PNC)/APNU’s actions in the last year. And, according to these sensitive souls in PNC/APNU, this really hurt their sensitivities and sensibilities. And if the feelings of these poor dears were hurt, how can we expect they would not torpedo the single most critical infrastructural project in our history??
Reminds you of somebody, doesn’t it. Well, in case you didn’t connect the dots, Ramkarran in his latest blog/news/propaganda piece, explicitly did: he supports the PNC’s position! He also rips into the president and affirmed that if only he had spoken sweet words into the ears of the PNC/APNU, we would be getting power from AFHEP by now.
This from a man, who in the past has explicitly pointed out that the PNC, in whatever incarnation, has always insisted that “the only thing the PPP/C understands is force”!! But it has always been said that politics makes strange bedfellows, hasn’t it? But it’s not so strange when you consider the lust for power is the strongest human drive. Even stronger than sex.
…with self-fulfilling prophecies
We’ve had it up to our kazoos with the AFHEP sabotage. But we have to take some time out with the latest revelations – which the opposition saboteurs knew about all along. Sithe Global, as the majority equity partner, was paying for the due diligence that the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), as a potential provider to the project, had undertaken. If they pulled out of the project, then it should’ve been obvious that they wouldn’t be funding a report that was of no use to them.
Now both the Alliance For Change (AFC) and APNU claimed that they were waiting for the IDB’s due diligence findings – due out in October – before they pronounced definitively on the project. But the moment Sithe conditioned its participation on the approval of the bills by which the government would backstop Guyana Power and Light (GPL) payments, they knew if they voted “no” there would be no due diligence. AFC voted “yes”. APNU ensured that its stance of “no Amaila” was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
…with sugar
It is now very clear that whether or not the Skeldon Sugar Factory is operating, we will be having a disastrous production shortfall this year. We must not wait until the crop ends before we begin to make contingency plans.